Drummer
Micah Sullivan lost his music and his dreams when his wife died unexpectedly.
In the emotional aftermath, he quit his successful country band and pushed away
his family and friends. Three years later, he’s opened a music shop on Hale
Street in Nashville and tells himself he’s content trying to make it a hit.
What he failed to consider is that success requires connections—including the
very ones he turned his back on.

Sloan
McGuire is up for a new challenge…never realizing it might lead to heartbreak.
When she takes a job as entertainment manager at a bar not known for its music,
she doesn’t bargain for running into Micah, whose late wife was her best friend.
She can tell within minutes that he’s still grieving. Out of love for her
friend, she attempts to reconnect with the reclusive drummer. Falling for him
isn’t in the plans, though—not only because he was married to her friend but
because she’s been second-best before, and she never wants to play that role
again.

As Micah
starts finding his rhythm, life throws him a different beat. But with a little
improvisation and a lot of courage, he just might tap into the one and only
connection he needs.

How did you come up with the concept and
the characters for the story?

Micah Sullivan, the hero,
showed up in my first book in the series (Sweet Spot) wanting to rent space for
a music store on Hale Street. Whenever a new character is mentioned in a scene,
I go to Pinterest and find inspiration for the character so I can better
describe him or her. The photo I found of Micah is (of course) hot, but in it,
he’s not happy, and that got my imagination going. Why isn’t he happy? (Turns
out his wife died unexpectedly three years ago.) He’s also wearing a hood in
it, and that led me to think about why he might be “hiding.” (In a nutshell,
grief, sadness, and a little bit of guilt.) His journey drives the story, so in
this case, the picture was sort of worth 75,000 words. J

What did you enjoy most about writing this
book?

The Hale Street series is a
multi-author series I’m writing with two of my best friends, Emily Leigh and
Natasha Lake. While each story is stand-alone, we collaborate constantly on the
setting and character crossover, and the collaboration is the very best part.
The synergy the three of us have makes writing kind of magical, even on the
hard days. If I’m struggling with a plot point, my girls are all over it with
me because they know my characters almost as well as I do. Plus we do girls’
writing retreat weekends a few times a year and a weeklong private writing
retreat in a lake cottage each summer. Not only is it great for the writing but
it’s soul time.

What gave you the most trouble with this
story?

It was a challenge to take
Micah from a grieving, hiding-from-life man to a happy, in-love one. You can’t
rush grief. Further complicating things was that his heroine, Sloan, was his
wife’s best friend. That’s not the main conflict between them, but I couldn’t
gloss over it either.

What 5 things should
readers know about you?

1.
ONE AND ONLY is my 18th published book and my favorite one (at least
today!)

2.
I have four cats and have told my husband he can never leave me or I’ll be a
cat lady.

3.
Making decisions is often excruciating for me. I can weigh pros and cons until my
eyes cross.

5.
I live in Wisconsin, the cheese state, but I can’t eat dairy. Before that, I
lived in Kansas, the wheat state, but I can’t eat gluten.

What do you like best
about being a writer? What is the most challenging part?

This
might be revealing my inner geekiness, but I love the psychology aspect of
writing two people who fall in love. When two people come together with an
assortment of baggage, you’ve got a lot of stuff to work through, and I love
the puzzle of it all and figuring out how the pieces go together. I love it
especially after the hard part’s all done!

What do you do when you are not writing?

Work-wise, I’m a full-time freelance
copyeditor, so I read all day every day (and correct grammar, etc. to my OCD
heart’s content). I get to read/edit just about every genre/sub-genre
imaginable, though more than half my projects are romance. Tough job but
somebody has to do it! I feel blessed that I can say honestly I love what I do.
Between freelancing, which can mean working weekends and holidays, and raising
two teenage boys with my husband, I manage to maintain a fairly high level of
crazy.

Can you tell us about your upcoming book?

I don’t know a lot yet
because I’m in the early stages of writing it, but my next book, out this
summer, is a novella about two characters from ONE AND ONLY. Lena Kessler is
the oldest of four sisters and the only one still single. She longs for love
and babies like the rest of her family has. Former NHL player Ash McGuire is
the last person who could give her what she dreams of but the only one she
wants.

Amy Knupp is the author of
contemporary romance, a freelance copy editor for Blue Otter Editing, and a
freelance technical writer. While the collection of professional hats she wears
sounds a bit scattered and broad, the common thread among all of them (perhaps
the little ball on top of each hat) is the written word. She loves words and
grammar and meaty, engrossing stories with complex characters.

Amy
lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two teenage sons, four cats, and two box
turtles. She graduated from the University of Kansas with degrees in French and
journalism. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, breaking up cat fights,
watching college hoops, and annoying her family by correcting their grammar.